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By Kenneth N. Pike

The need to comply with environmental regulations and increase production has resulted in modifications to the East Penn blast furnace operation. Changes made include furnace design modifications, closed loop water cooling with heat recovery, automated weighing and charging, automated tuyere punching, ammonia scrubbing of tail gases and improved metal and slag handling to minimize environmental impact. These changes have resulted in a marked increase in yearly production and compliance with many of the air, water and solid waste regulations.

Jan 1, 1990

By Christian Bernhard, Mario Hartl, Susanne K. Michelic

"One aspect of an efficient process and product optimization of the liquid steelmaking process is the understanding of reactions and interactions between the components steel, slag and nonmetallic inclusions. The present paper focuses on a fundamental study of this topic by combining the powerful methods of thermodynamic modeling with systematic experiments on a laboratory scale and subsequent SEM/EDS analyses. The modeling aspect is addressed by the commercial software FactSage 6.1; laboratory experiments are performed for a low-alloyed, Ca-treated carbon steel combined with varying slag compositions. The consequent SEM/EDS analyses provide a detailed insight into the inclusion landscape which offers a strong tool for characterizing the modification of inclusions. In the present study the combination of these methods is mainly applied to oxides, due to their crucial influence on the final product quality, thus giving important indications for further optimizing the secondary metallurgy processes.IntroductionIn recent years, the range of application for steels has been enlarged continuously; also resulting in extreme surrounding conditions combined with considerable stresses for the material. This trend is directly linked with higher demands on the properties of steels. In order to optimize the final product quality, the cleanness of steels is an important criterion. For this reason, the broad topic ""Steel Cleanness"" has become one of the main research points at the Chair of Metallurgy. Next to the continuous optimization of methods for the characterization of cleanness, the primary aim is to combine thermodynamic modeling and laboratory experiments in order to describe the changes in inclusion landscape under different conditions.The steel cleanness can particularly be influenced in the processes of secondary metallurgy. In different processes the reactions and interactions between the components steel, slag and nonmetallic inclusions (NMI) are essential for the final inclusion landscape. Consequently, the understanding of the occurring reactions is a fundamental aspect for further development and process optimization. In secondary metallurgy especially oxide-slag systems consisting of the components Ca0-Ah03-Mg0-Si02, which significantly influence the modification of NMI, are of importance. Several works dealing with the interactions of oxide non-metallic inclusions with different slag systems have been published in the last years [1-4]. In order to observe the dissolution of oxides in different slag compositions a Laser Scanning Electron Microscope is frequently used. A very detailed study on the ternary system Ah03-Ca0-Mg0 and its subsystems was also done by De Aza et al. [5, 6]."

Jan 1, 2011

By Xi-Shan Li, Qian Li, Yong-bin Yang, Tao Jiang, Jie Ge

Compared with other pretreatments of sulfur & arsenic-bearing gold, double-layered pellet roasting has an advantage that sulfur dioxide and arsenic trioxide volatilizing from this refractory gold ores can be solidified into the coating without emission during the roasting. However, the separation of coating from roasted double-layered pellet should be focused on in the novel pretreatment. Based on the difference of physicochemical characteristics between roasted solidified coating and pellet core, several separation methods including grinding, drop impact and water quenching method had been systematically studied in this paper. The results showed that magnetic and gravity concentration could not obtain a satisfactory separation effect. The optimum separation rate of grinding was only 38.94% at grind time 12min, but it increased to 85.05% by drop impact under drop height 0.75m, drop times 20 and impact angle 45°, and that of water quenching taking advantage of slaking reaction of lime could approach 75.32%.

Jan 1, 2015

By Pengfu Tan

NiModel, a thermodynamic model, database and computer program, has been developed to predict the distribution behavior of Ni, Cu, Co, Fe, S, O, As, Sb and Bi, and heat balance in the nickel pyrometallurgical processes such as Outokumpu flash smelting, Outokumpu direct high-grade matte smelting, INCO flash smelting, and Peirce-Smith converting processes. In this model, as much as 16 elements (Ni, Cu, Co, Fe, As, Sb, Bi, S, O, Al, Ca, Mg, Si, N, C and H) are considered. The compositions of matte, slag and gaseous phases, and heat balance are calculated using the thermodynamic data and the activity coefficients of the components derived from the experimental data. The model predictions were compared with the known industrial data from Kalgoorlie Nickel Smelter in Australia, Outokumpu Harjavalta Nickel Smelter in Finland and INCO Metals Company in Canada, and an excellent agreement was obtained. In this paper, the applications of NiModel in the nickel pyrometallurgical industries have been presented. NiModel has been used by Jinchuan Group Limited in China.

Jan 1, 2004

By Hemraj Dangi, S. Murali, Bhisham Yadav, Mohini Saxena, P. Asokan

"Demonstration studies were carried on the use of fly ash as soil modifier and supplier of micronutrients to improve the agricultural productivity based on the process optimised at lab scale at Advanced Materials & Processes Research Institute, Bhopal. The field trials were conducted in Uttar Pradesh (North India) Orissa (South Eastern India) and Madhya Pradesh (Central India) under different soil and crop conditions. 100-650 tonnes of fly ash per hectare were applied depending upon the soil and fly ash characteristics. Both short and long term studies on impact of fly ash on soil and food quality were conducted. With the fly ash application, the edible yield of tomato, cabbage, potato, wheat, pea, onion, paddy, sunflower, maize etc., were increased from 12 - 46% as compared to the control soil where no fly ash was used. The crop response to various elements mainly heavy metals grown in soil and fly ash applied soil was found comparable to that of control, which are within the permissible limits and meet the food quality standards. The results of impact of fly ash on biotic and abiotic properties of soil, along with the quantity and quality of agricultural produces generated under pilot scale demonstrations in three different parts of India are discussed in this paper. The outcome of this work could act as guiding force for confidence building and to maximise the use of fly ash, generated from thermal power plants worldwide as one of the major mineral waste for agriculture purposes.IntroductionThe advantages of application of fly ash in terms of improvement of soil properties and crop yields have been published by various researchers in India and abroad. Attention is also given about the possible negative and beneficial impact of pond ash in agriculture due to presence of heavy elements, radioactive nuclides and plant nutrients in fly ash. It is evident from the analysis of Indian fly ash that the presence of heavy elements and radionuclides levels are comparable with normal soil. The positive impact that has been reported is with regard to germination, yield and crop growth. The significant impacts are: long term effect of heavy and toxic elements content of fly ash on soil and up take of these elements by plant. Pilot scale demonstration studies have been completed with varying soil crop-combination under different agro-climatic conditions showed considerable improvement in the productivity of cereals, oil seeds and vegetables."

Jan 1, 2008

The viscosity of high magnesium content FeO-Fe3O4-SiO2-CaO-MgO slags at nickel flash smelting conditions was investigated using a commercial rotational viscometer. The studied parameters were compositions of slag and temperature. The viscosity of these slags was measured as a function of CaO, MgO, SiO2, FeO. Fe3O4 and Fe/SiO2 in temperature range from 1473K to 1723K. These slags contained 5.81 to 10.59 pct MgO, 0 to 10.37 pct CaO, 28.21 to 36.21 pct SiO2, 39.40 to 55.42 pct Fe and 1.1 to 1.5 Fe/SiO2.

Jan 1, 1999

By M. Bhattacharya, A. Dutta, P. Barat

"Pinning of dislocations at nanosized obstacles like precipitates, voids and bubbles, is a crucial mechanism in the context of phenomena like hardening and creep. The interaction between such an obstacle and a dislocation is often explored at fundamental level by means of analytical tools, atomistic simulations and finite element methods. Nevertheless, such studies fail to predict the effect on the overall plasticity on account of insufficient information about the underlying statistics of this process comprising a large number of dislocations and obstacles in a system. Here we propose a new statistical approach, where the statistics of pinning at idealized spherical obstacles is explored by taking into account the generalized size distribution of the obstacle along with the dislocation density within a three-dimensional framework. The application of this approach has been demonstrated for dislocation pinning at nanovoids in neutron irradiated type 316-stainless steel.IntroductionPresence of nanoscale obstacles like precipitates, voids and bubbles play a crucial role in determining the deformation behavior of a crystalline solid on account of the interactions between the line defects and such localized obstacles. In the context of the glide motion of dislocations, the obstacles can offer resistance to a moving dislocation, thereby causing a hardening effect [l-3]. In some other cases, inclusions like voids and bubbles can affect the rate of dislocation climb through diffusive [4] and non-diffusive [5] mechanisms. Over the last few decades, numerous studies have been performed to gain an insight of the dislocation-obstacle interactions at a fundamental level. These include the interactions responsible for the hardening effect, in addition to those pertaining to the non-conservative motion of dislocations.Although the elementary mechanisms of the various dislocation-obstacle interactions have been vastly explored and understood by means of analytical theory and numerical simulations, it remains difficult to quantitatively understand their effects on the macroscopic deformation behavior. This is due to the fact that their influence on the gross plastic deformation of a bulk sample would be the collective outcome of a large ensemble of such interactions. As a result, it becomes infeasible to predict the bulk deformation behavior of a material until the statistics of pinning of the dislocations at the localized obstacles is available. In the context of precipitate hardening, some well known attempts to extract the pinning-statistics were made by Friedel-Fleischer [6] and Mott [7] by analytical means, which were later tested through simplified 2-dimensional in-silica modeling [8]."

Jan 1, 2014

By Valentine A. Chanturiya

A model for development of electric discharges between particles of sulfide minerals (pyrite) under the action of high-voltage nanosecond pulses is proposed. It is shown that through discharges in a layer of pyrite particles lead to energy concentration in small contact regions between particles; the concentrated energy is sufficiently high for local disintegration of mineral complexes.

Jan 1, 2009

By T. Lezhava

A new reactor model with rotating cathodes has been developed where various forms (dendrite, spongy) of metal depositions and their uninterrupted removal are accomplished by the realization of high current densities and low energy consumption. At the same time in contrast with the existing methods a high quality metal powder may be obtained from concentrated electrolytes without any specific organic or inorganic additives, which allows raising the intensity of the process. The reactor can be used for electrowinning of metals with low adhesive capacity (Pb, Ag, Cu, Zn, Ni, Co, etc.) and the powders. The obtained products may be utilized in general metallurgy as well as in powder metallurgy.

Jan 1, 2006

By Kang-In Rhee

Nonferrous metal recycling not only provides energy saving and environmental benefits but also is a significant factor in the supply of various types of metals used in our society. Recycling plays an important role in establishing the sustainability of materials. The total amount of recycled nonferrous metals by weight accounts for less than 5% but their value is larger than 50% compared to ferrous metal recycling which consists of about half of the total metal recycling in weight. This paper describes trends and typical achievements in nonferrous metal recycling and overviews the present and future of nonferrous metal recycling technology and business in Korea.

Jan 1, 2006

By Pinakin C. Chaubal

Today?s steel industry is in a vibrant and resurgent mode. This transformation has been in the making for some time now. Over the last few decades, the industry was steadily transforming itself into becoming a high tech industry. New technology was adopted, efficiencies were enhanced, lean manufacturing concepts were brought in and a strong customer focus was developed. Today?s mills employ sophisticated instrumentation, computerized monitoring, on-line smart systems etc. driving processes that are producing at rates of many tons/minute. All this is not possible without judiciously using the latest available technologies in various fields and developing a more sophisticated work force. Prof. Sohn has been a pioneer in driving the concept of process engineering in process metallurgy. In this paper the focus is on some aspects of process engineering ? primarily process modeling - as applied to iron and steelmaking processes. Examples are shown to demonstrate how problems have been addressed. Some thoughts on future directions are presented.

Jan 1, 2006

By Pinakin C. Chaubal

Today?s steel industry is in a vibrant and resurgent mode. This transformation has been in the making for some time now. Over the last few decades, the industry was steadily transforming itself into becoming a high tech industry. New technology was adopted, efficiencies were enhanced, lean manufacturing concepts were brought in and a strong customer focus was developed. Today?s mills employ sophisticated instrumentation, computerized monitoring, on-line smart systems etc. driving processes that are producing at rates of many tons/minute. All this is not possible without judiciously using the latest available technologies in various fields and developing a more sophisticated work force. Prof. Sohn has been a pioneer in driving the concept of process engineering in process metallurgy. In this paper the focus is on some aspects of process engineering ? primarily process modeling - as applied to iron and steelmaking processes. Examples are shown to demonstrate how problems have been addressed. Some thoughts on future directions are presented.

Jan 1, 2006

By D. M. Hausen

Multiple drill sections through many of the numerous breccia pipes in the American Eagle copper deposit at Copper Creek, Arizona, have been evaluated by means of alteration and geochemical data. Contoured plots indicate vertically plunging, concentric, cylindrical shells of alteration and mineralized rock that are similar in structure, geometry, magnitude and petrology to the San Manuel-Kalamazoo Deposit, located about 14 miles to the southwest. Both deposits are similar in dimension and consist of multiple, irregular, rod-shaped injections of porphyry into a granodiorite host. Analogous to the San Manuel-Kalamazoo Deposit, most of the porphyry plugs are oriented parallel to the cylindrical axis of the "ore shell". A continuously mineralized, elliptical shell, inferred from deep drilling, is capped by a flatter zone of copper mineralization. Above this flat zone, copper-bearing fluids were channeled upward along conduits that correspond with quartz-sericite "breccia pipes". At depth, zones of sericite and K-feldspar alteration products exhibit conformable relationships with the copper deposition. A "bullet-shaped" ore shell, with a nearly vertical axis, is proposed to explain the conformable zones of altered and mineralized rock. The "nose" or top of the "bullet" is 1800 to 2300 feet below the surface, and structurally controlled in part by steeply dipping Hi and ENE faults. If correct, this model suggests that the vertical ore shell may extend to great depth.

Jan 1, 1988

By Shunhong Huang

To improve understanding the effect of heavy metal chromium on soil biota, laboratory incubation experiment was carried out in the soils contaminated artificially with five concentrations of chromate (50, 250, 500, 1000 and 2000 mg kg_1 soil) over time (35 days). The population and diversity of bacteria, fungi and actinomycetes in soils were measured as indicators of soil microbial processes in the disturbances mentioned above. Incubation experiment results elucidated that the population and diversity of microorganisms decreased with increasing Cr (VI) concentration. Furthermore, various microorganisms showed different sensitivity to total Cr contamination. The sensitivity of microbial population to chromium contamination was in the order: actinomycetes >bacteria>fungi. The resulted implied that the microorganism can be used as an indicator of chromium contamination.

Jan 1, 2008

By T. A. George, David J. Sellmyer

"The concept of achieving a useful high-energy-product magnet through appropriate nanostructuring of known hard and soft phases has been tantalizing researchers since the idea was first proposed. The fabrication of exchange-coupled nanocomposite magnets faces several challenges including aligning the easy anisotropy axes of the hard-phase grains. Here we investigate experimentally two-phase nanostructures of hard Lio-ordered FePt and soft iron-rich/cc Fe(Pt). The Fe-Pt thin films were produced by epitaxial cosputtering onto MgO (001) single-crystal substrates which lead to strong (001) texturing. The measured hysteresis loops indicate nearly ideal exchange coupling. Excellent magnetic properties are obtained, with largest values of coercivity (51 kOe), saturation magnetization (1287 emu/ cm3, J, = 16.2 kG), and nominal maximum energy product (58 MGOe).1. IntroductionA key figure of merit for permanent magnets is the maximum energy product (BH)rrw.x. The achievable maximum energy product is determined by a magnet's saturation magnetization M, and its magnetic anisotropy. For example, it is well known that (BH)rrw.x :S 4n2M,2• In the past, record energy products have been the result of discovering new compounds with high values of magnetization and anisotropy. However, finding new compounds with better magnetic properties than the current record-holding magnet Nd2Fe14B has proven to be difficult. A different approach is to exploit the exchange coupling mechanism between known hard and soft magnetic phases to enhance the maximum energy product [1-5]. In such a composite system, high coercivity is achieved due to the anisotropy of the hard phase as well as a nanostructure which prohibits large-scale domain wall reversal mechanisms. Magnetization is enhanced by the soft phase and loop squareness results from texturing of the hard phase easy-axis as well as complete exchange coupling between the coexisting hard and soft grains."

Jan 1, 2012

By Shigehito Deki

"A new wet process has been developed for the synthesis of various kinds of oxide thin films on various kinds of substrates, even which have complex surface morphology, from aqueous solution. The process was named as the LPD, Liquid Phase Deposition, method, which has some advantages over the conventional dry processes. This process can be applied to an on-site synthesis of advanced materials in the thin film technology. In this paper, some current topics on the synthesis of the composite thin oxide films by the LPD method, are presented.IntroductionGenerally, metal oxide thin films have been made by different preparative processes such as r.f. sputtering, chemical vapor depositon, CVD, laser ablation and sol-gel method, etc [1-3]. Each method has it own advantages and disadvantage. In some cases, the process is not suitable for the preparation of thin film on substrate with large surface area or complex surface morphology, and makes the deposition apparatus complicated and expenisve. By using Liquid Phase Deposition, LPD, method which overcomes some of those problems, metal oxide or hydroxide thin film can be formed on the substrate with large surface area and complex surface morphology, which are immersed into the aqueous solution only at ambient temperature and under atmosphere without any special equipments and high energy. And also, multicomponent oxide thin films can be formed readily by mixing solutions containing the objective metal ions, because it is performed in the aqueous solution which is typically a homogeneous mixing system. This process utilizes ligand-exchange, hydrolysis, equlibrium reaction of metal-fluoro complex species, MF x (x-2n>-, and F consumptive reaction. In the aqueous solution, MFx<x-2n>-is hydrolyzed with water to release F ions by a ligand exchange equilibrium reaction as following;"

Jan 1, 2000

By Truan-Sheng Lui, Li-Hui Chen, Hao-Wen Hsueh, Fei-Yi Hung

"Since Ag wires have similar hardness and bonding properties to Au wires, they can be applied in some pads. In the present study, the annealing effect (at 225°C~275°C for 30min) on the tensile mechanical properties of silver wires with f=23µm was investigated. In addition, the micro-structural characteristics and the mechanical properties before and after an electric flame-off (EFO) process were also studied. Experimental results indicate that with annealing temperatures of more than 250°C, the silver wires possessed a fully annealed structure, the tensile strength and the hardness decreased, and the elongation was raised significantly. Under the thermal effect of EFO, the necks of the Ag balls underwent recrystallization and grain growth was induced, and the annealed Ag wires had a shorter zone of HAZ (220µm). The bonding strength and the neck-strength of the Ag wires were more than 7gf and possessed excellent bonding properties.IntroductionThermosonic ball bonding is one of the preferred processes for electronic packaging to connect a semiconductor chip and a lead frame by a thin metal wire. At present, gold wire and copper wire are the preferred interconnect materials to bond with the aluminum metallized wafer pads [1, 2]. Since gold is expensive and the reliability of copper is poorer [3], the study of silver wire has attracted a lot of attention already. In addition, the inherent properties of high ductility and low hardness of silver as well as its workability effectiveness compared to gold, have made it a preferred alternative .[4, 5]"

Jan 1, 2012

By K. Dzieciol

The paper presents a study about three image correlation methods ?common cross-correlation, mutual information and phase-correlation ? applied to characterize microstructures reconstructed with X-ray tomography. It is shown that phase correlation is not only the fastest, but also the most sensitive method for detection of similar microstructure features, cavities in the present case. A new image correlation indicator is proposed, which takes into account both the phase shift and the amplitude of similar features in compared images. Some preprocessing aspects related to the tomographic reconstruction and filtering out of characteristic noise are also discussed.

Jan 1, 2009

By Jing Zhong, Yugang Li, Chen Yan, Shaoda Zhang, Qian Wang

Online surface quenching technology has been developed for the hot charging process to prevent the surface cracks in high strength low-alloy steel slabs. In this paper, a two-dimensional heat transfer model of surface quenching process was presented. This finite element model includes nonlinear thermodynamic properties, by which the slab temperature distributions were computed. The model predicted temperatures show reasonable agreement with the measurements. The effects of the water flow rate and slab movement velocity on temperature variation during the quenching and subsequent tempering process were investigated. The result shows that the temperature drop increases but the tempering temperature changes slightly with increasing water flow rate and decreasing slab velocity. Keeping the slab movement velocity at 1.2-2.1m/min and the water flow rate at 55-70m3/h, the slab surface experiences a temperature drop of 400-600 firstly, then recovers above 650, the quenching and energy-saving effect are remarkable.

Jan 1, 2015

By Leo Brewer, Kazuyoshi Shimakage, Mamoru Mitomo, Toshiyuki Nishimura, Yoichiro Uemura, Shinji Hirai

"In the synthesis process of ß -La2S3 via the sulfurization of La2O3 powder using CS2 gas, La2O2S was formed. This occurred at an initial stage of the reaction for sulfurization temperatures below 973K, and ß -La2S3 was also formed at a shorter period for higher sulfurization temperatures. It was found that the oxygen content in ß -La2S3 powders decreased gradually with an increase in sulfurization temperature. On the other hand, the carbon content in these powders increased gradually with an increase in the sulfurization temperature. Though it has been reported that ß -La2S3 was transformed to Y -La2S3 at 1723K± 50K, the sintered compact of double-phase Y -La2S3 and ß. -La2S3 was formed at a rather higher temperature of 1973K when the synthetic powder of ß -La2S3 containing a high amount of oxygen was used. However, phase transformation of -La2S3 to Y -La2S3 progressed preferentially with a decrease in the oxygen content of synthetic ß -La2S3 powder. The Seebeck coefficient of the sintered double-phase Y -La2S3 and -La2S3 was higher than that of the single-phase Y -La2S3, reported previously.Introduction La2S3 exists in three polymorphic forms that are similar to a series of Ce2S3, Pr2S3 and Nd2S3: a, ß , and Y'. The a -La2S3, which is stable at low temperature, is irreversibly transformed to ß -La2S3 of various compositions in the solid-solution range between La2S3 and La3S4, at 923 ± 50K. The -La2S3 may also be an oxysulfide of La10S14O2. Moreover, the ß .-La2S3 phase is transformed to Y -La2S3 ,which has a Th3P4 structure, at 1573 ± 100K. The melting point of Y -La2S3 is 2398 ± 30K where this temperature is similar to those of common refractory materials such as silica and alumina. Therefore, it can be predicted that y -La2S3 which has a high melting point and a thermodynamic stability due to the strong affinity of La for S, would have &high refractory character and chemical inertness in many molten metals. The y -La2S3, colored vivid faint yellow is stable up to 623K in air, where oxidation starts. y -La2S3 is frequently used as pigments for plastics and paints3. Furthermore, Y -La2S3 which is a semiconductor, is considered to be useful as a thermoelectric conversion materials, because it has a high Seebeck coefficient."

Jan 1, 2000